Why Chief Justice Roberts Dared Not Overturn President Obama’s Healthcare Plan [View all]

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If you want to renew your faith that things might turn out well for America after all, read this article from John W. Dean, a Justia columnist, and former counsel to the president.

http://verdict.justia.com/2012/06/29/why-chief-justice-roberts-dared-not-overturn-president-obamas-healthcare-plan

Informed people understood that this case was a defining moment for the Roberts Court, as did the Chief Justice. Based on this ruling, if the Roberts Court had overturned this important new law, it would likely have been forever viewed as a Court controlled by conservative partisan political activists, rather than a Court where, in fact, justice could be done.

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Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar told Bloomberg BNA that the early landmark holding of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), upholding the power of Congress to incorporate a national bank, was clear authority for Obamacare. Professor Amar, who says that there are a host of Commerce Clause rulings to provide authority for the Court to uphold the healthcare law, told Ezra Klein before the ruling, “If they decide [to overturn] this by 5-4, then yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud. Here I was, in my silly little office, thinking law mattered, and it really didn’t. What mattered was politics, money, party, and party loyalty.” While Akhil Amar may not be cheering Chief Justice Roberts’s position on the Commerce Clause, the fact that Roberts relied on McCulloch v. Maryland to frame his ruling cannot be too disheartening for Amar.